A LEADING Scottish Labour activist and Yes supporter who was a star speaker at Richard Leonard’s General Election campaign launch last year has quit the party.

Sean Baillie announced his decision on Thursday after Sir Keir Starmer underlined the party’s opposition to a second independence referendum and as a row broke out over the sacking of rival leadership contender and left-winger Rebecca Long-Bailey from his top team.

“I cancelled my Labour Party membership earlier this week, I wanted to write to my CLP sec [constituency party secretary] rather than make a big deal out of it,” he tweeted.

“I’m only posting now to say I’m glad I did. There’s some great people in the party, but my involve[ment] however short was to support a crucial moment in time that had huge potential to stop the coming onslaught.

“It’s clear that has passed. There’s work to be done elsewhere, and that’s where I’ll be focussing my efforts.”

Baillie was among the left-wing activists who addressed a rally in Maryhill last November where Leonard kickstarted the party’s General Election campaign.

A former national organiser for Rise, Baillie campaigned for Labour’s candidate Angela Feeney in Motherwell and Wishaw ahead of the December poll.

One Scottish Labour member and Yes supporter told The National he knew of many comrades who supported independence who had left the party recently.

“I know a lot of people who have left in the past couple of weeks,” he said, adding it was over the party’s renewed opposition to indyref2.

“The party last year made clear it was targeting people from working-class backgrounds who used to be life-long Labour voters, who voted for the SNP on the premise they wanted independence and moved away from Labour as they regarded it as kamikaze Unionist party, to be perfectly frank.

“The position it’s now adopting is not going to put them in a good position in the lead up to the 2021 Holyrood election. It’s unfortunate. In the cold light of day everyone knows the party needs to win back Yes voters.”

The party has also been rocked by the resignation of Khosrow Zanganeh, a former chair of Scottish Young Labour, who publicly gave up his membership on Thursday.

He announced his decision in the wake of Sir Keir Starmer’s sacking of Long-Bailey as shadow education secretary after she shared an article which contained an “antisemitic conspiracy theory”.

Zanganeh said: ”I joined the party after being inspired by Jeremy Corbyn and the wider vision he had for the country. From all I have seen from the trends of the party as it stands I don’t see the promise of that vision any longer.

“There are fundamental problems with the approach of the current leadership and policies they have chosen to pursue. Their evident and abhorrent disregard and poisonous attitude towards left wing and left leaning members has been far too much to tolerate.”

Meanwhile, one of the UK’s leading political scientists said Starmer has made his first “mistake” by opposing a second independence referendum.

Simon Hix, a politics professor at the LSE, drew attention to the Labour leader’s stance on a new vote which Starmer set out in a briefing to Scottish journalists on Thursday.

The position was underlined despite a poll putting support for independence at 54% and the finding 43% of Scots who voted Labour in December backed Yes. The LSE politics professor wrote on Twitter: “I think this is Starmer’s first mistake. I understand why he’s done it. But it’s high risk, given the trajectory of public opinion in Scotland.”

Labour opposed indyref2 at the General Election, but said it would not block a referendum if Scots wanted one.

The caveat came after John McDonnell, the then shadow chancellor, used an appearance at the Edinburgh Festival to say a Labour government would not stand in the way of another vote.